4 ms·
Sounds like this is the issue: > "Also included in the prescription are optimal weather conditions, including a minimum temperature for burns in grass and brus
by photochemsyn 3y ago
Sounds like this is the issue:
> "Also included in the prescription are optimal weather conditions, including a minimum temperature for burns in grass and brush of 30 degrees and a maximum of 80 degrees; relative humidity between 5% and 40%; and wind speed between 2 mph and 15 mph. Such conditions are becoming rarer."
If you broaden the acceptable range of conditions, you risk more prescribed burns going out of control, and you generate more air quality issues - and Colorado, like the California Central Valley, has some pretty bad air quality already:
https://www.cpr.org/2022/04/12/front-range-air-quality-ozone-violations-epa/ https://www.cpr.org/2022/04/12/front-range-air-quality-ozone...
Note that prescribed fires aren't the only way of removing excess vegetation, there's mechanized mowing and goat herds for example.
- petsfed 3y ago>Note that prescribed fires aren't the only way of removing excess vegetation, there's mechanized mowing and goat herds for example. Which works fine for the areas east of the Flatirons (that is, the plains), but that's only half the county. A real problem for wildfire management is that they often happen in areas that we consider undevelopable, which is to say, difficult to get into and out of. I recall going climbing in Boulder Canyon some decades ago, looking up at some burn scars and thinking "it would be several hundred feet of technical climbing to even reach where that fire occurred". Fighting it would be simply out of the question, and prevention without controlled burns would be just as difficult.